


Monocle

by wavewright62



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Fluff, Other, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 07:24:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11375382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wavewright62/pseuds/wavewright62
Summary: It is, after all, what one wears when one must look respectable.





	Monocle

**Author's Note:**

> This fulfills my entry for the letter M in the SSSS Alphabet Soup and Singalong Challenge.

\---------------  
“What is _this?_ ” Tuuli picked out the glass disk from the tray in the jewellery box. She and her grandmother Juhanna were playing one of Tuuli’s favourite games when she came to visit: What Treasures Does Grandma Have in Her Jewellery Box? She had never noticed the glass disk before. A long chain was attached to it and the girl watched, fascinated, as it uncurled and dangled in the air in front of her face. She shook her hand a little to make the long chain dance. “It’s like a snake, only with a glass head,” she exclaimed, “ _hsssss, hssss._ ” She made snake noises while the chain settled into a spinning wave pattern.

Tuuli’s grandmother laughed lightly and quickly gathered the chain up. With a light tug, she pulled the glass disk out from Tuuli’s small fingers and caught it in her hand. Tuuli watched with round eyes from under her fringe, as Juhanna breathed on the disk and then wiped the foggy glass dry with her shirt hem. Juhanna then took the glass disk, opened her eyes wide with raised eyebrows, and put the disk in place in front of her left eye. She scowled a bit crookedly at Tuuli, pinching the glass between her cheek and eyebrow so it stayed in place in front of her eye. “What do you think?,” Juhanna grinned down, “do I look fancy?”

Tuuli stuck her thumb in her mouth and did not reply. Juhanna gently took her hand and thumb away from her mouth, “Don’t suck your thumb, darling, it will give you an overbite.” Too late for that, she thought to herself; the girl’s front teeth had come in, and Tuuli already had a bit of an overbite. The effect was accentuated when, bereft of her thumb, the girl started sucking her lower lip instead. “It’s called a monocle, breadcrumb. It’s like glasses, only there’s just one lens.” She raised her eyebrows and let the monocle fall into her palm. “Only, this one isn’t even like proper glasses, as it has no prescription. That means, it doesn’t fix bad eyesight, you know. I got it for a costume once. Here, try it on.”

Tuuli took the monocle carefully from Juhanna’s outstretched hand. She widened her eye and then brought the eyebrow down to pinch the monocle in place. It took her a few attempts, but the girl finally got it in place. She raised her triumphant face to Juhanna, who laughed merrily at the sight of the little girl’s face and her messy plaited hair set off by the monocle. Tuuli peered into the vanity mirror next to the jewellery box and pulled a few faces, some grinning, some serious. “I look fine,” she finally pronounced in posh tones, “I look like a proper gentleman now.”

“You’re not a gentleman, Tuuli,” Juhanna chuckled. “But you do look more like a respectable lady now, yes. You look very respectable.”

Tuuli locked eyes with Juhanna in their double reflection. “Grandma, do you think I can see evil when I wear this?”

The girl looked so serious. Juhanna couldn’t bring herself to tease her. “Well, I don’t know about that. But maybe,” she sighed, “maybe it will help you see money.”

Tuuli turned her eyes back to her own reflection. “Seeing money is good,” she agreed, “but I want the superpower to see evil, so I can protect you and äiti and isä and my friend Sonja and Misu-Misu.”

Juhanna had no comeback for that, and scowled slightly while she thought about protecting her family from evil. Hitler turned out to be evil, and Stalin even worse. They were now long gone, but dark forces continued to plague the world. Tuuli was too young for any of that, wasn’t she? Her dark reverie was broken by Tuuli taking the monocle off and making wave patterns by spinning the chain. She had her thumb in her mouth again as she solemnly watched the chain spin.

\----------------------------

“Wait!,” Tuuli called from the other room, “I know what you need, just the very thing!”

Veeti continued rubbing at the spot on his tracking clothes. He didn’t usually bother too much about making sure he looked tidy, and sometimes a bit of dried blood on the outfit did much to impress the younger recruits. He supposed his mother was right, though, about needing to scrub up for today’s interview.

He was being considered for a promotion, a position guiding the effort to clear the banks of the waterway between Lake Saimaa and Pori on the seacoast. Veeti had experience among the scouts in the area around the ruins of Nokia, and also had impressed his superiors with his idea to bring in the new-fangled Swedish cleanser teams to raze the ruins of the towns and cities along the waterway. The fact that the idea originally came from Fredrik Svensson, his business contact over in Sweden, was not really relevant. Veeti thought it fitting that he should be the one to help guide the effort to clear a safe trade route with Sweden.

His mother came skittering over from the next room with a pouch carried carefully in her bony fingers, and a triumphant grin across her gaunt face. “See?,” Tuuli crowed, as she produced a glass disc from the pouch, which had a long chain dangling from it. Veeti looked vaguely politely at her treasure; he was accustomed to his mother’s flights of fancy over inconsequential things. “Put it on, put it on,” Tuuli urged him, “it’s just what you need to look _respectable._ ”

He couldn’t work out what she meant by putting the thing on, but she showed him how to pinch it between his eyebrow and cheek to keep it in front of his eye. Then she turned him to the mirror. The effect was rather shocking. Why had he never noticed that he was going grey before this? He looked like an old man, but he had to admit he certainly looked respectable.

Behind him came a small gale of girlish laughter. Veeti’s small daughter Taru had come in behind her grandmother, and was clapping her hands and giggling at the sight of her father wearing the monocle. Veeti ignored her as best as he could as he stood up straighter and dropped the monocle off his face. “Where did this come from?,” he rather stiffly asked his mother.

“I’ve had it all this time, it’s from the Old World,” Tuuli said, grin fading to a thin smile. “It was small enough, and reminds me of my family, _your_ family.” She huffed a bit as she picked up Taru, who threw her chubby arms around Tuuli’s neck before peering back at her father. Tuuli’s eyes wrinkled at the corners as her grin returned. “Not much need to look respectable the last few years, you see?”

Veeti nodded; he did indeed see. Their current rooms in the barracks at Keuruu were untold luxury compared to the assortment of encampments and endangered villages they’d lived in since abandoning the beautiful boat with the swan painted on it. He could barely remember even the cramped quarters he shared with his little cousin Ensi on the boat, let alone his comfortable room in the house back in Mikkeli, before the Rash came.

He put the monocle back on and smiled at his mother and daughter. “Hello,” he said in the most posh accent he could muster, “my name is Veeti Hollola. You may soon know me as Most Respectable Chief Strategist Hollola. How do you do?” He kissed Taru on the cheek, bringing her to giggles again. “I can see eeeevil when I wear this, you know. Are you eeeevil, little dumpling, or are you just _tasty?_ ” He mock-nibbled Taru's arm.

\---------------

Taru could barely suppress her excitement as she packed her rucksack for the journey to Iceland. Since they had sent Trond off with their application materials, she hadn’t really wanted to hold out much hope that it would be successful. Now they had been granted a hearing at the Nordic Council offices in Reykjavik, and Taru was to meet Torbjörn and Siv en route. Her mind whirled with the potential of the expedition’s success in the Silent World, as it had since the project took hold of her imagination some months ago. Don’t lick it before it drops, Taru, she told herself sternly.

Her eye fell upon the pouch crammed all the way in the back of her top drawer. _Yes, perfect,_ she thought, after all, I want to make a good impression. She brought out the pouch containing her best rope of real pearls, and the monocle that her father had given to her, when she was a young strategist rising through the ranks of the military. She smiled to herself at the memory and thought, I must look most _respectable._ Pity I really can’t see evil when I wear it though, that would have been handy. She brought out the monocle and twirled the chain briefly before carefully replacing it in the pouch.

**Author's Note:**

> I was writing this story as the events of pages 740-750 were playing out, and considered ditching this in favour of Mourning. Nothing I wrote rang true, and I decided to let Minna write that story, or not. So, I hope you all don't mind a bit of fluff in these hard times for the fandom.


End file.
